Not to get off topic, but "steam engines" still drive the whole world; whether nuclear or gas or coal fuel, or concentrated solar power, steam turbines are how heat is turned into motion to make electricity. Modern ones operate very close to the theoretical limit of efficiency (around 40% [1]). The great advance James Watt made in the late 18th century, was a technique to recapture heat from the exhaust and raise practical efficiencies to several percent, with the remainder of the theoretical limit eeked out progrssively in the following century.

One of the ways that limit is approached is to use the highest temperature difference the materials can stand; steam for large turbines is hot. The exhaust is still steam, but no longer hot enough to drive things efficiently. Indeed, the cooling loop of many plants run steam-hot, just not superheated-hot. Another common district heating approach (used in NYC) is a small direct gas-fired turbine driving a generator, with steam cooling. Combined generation is the use of that waste heat, for other heating purposes, and can raise total system efficiency. In Sweden, you can get unlimited heating for your pool in winter, if you live close enough to the nuclear plant! The heat was just going to be dumped into a cooling tower, otherwise. (I think that system is hot water, not steam distribution, but same idea.)

The pipes are indeed heat-leaky, despite usually being heavily insulated.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot%27s_theorem_(thermody...